Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Anglistisches Seminar
Landeskunde Irland: Shared Histories - Modern Ireland and Germany
SS 2006

Deconstructing Irishness
How the Irish became Irish

by

Eva-Maria Griese

§ 1 Introduction

When I lived in Ireland, there were a lot of things that crossed my paths which seemed to me rather peculiar compared to Germany. Apart from the great hospitality, the different landscape, the Irish interpretation of planning and organizing things, it was the sense of history and of „Irishness“ which people appeared to have that struck me as something special.
Of course there are stereotypes of and in both countries although the Irish stereotype is much more popular, e.g. with Saint Patrick‘s Day parades celebrated all over the world. Whereas the Germans are seen as very serious, punctual, tidy and organized, the Irish have the reputation of taking things easily, living in a beautiful country, having a rich history and being not English. Michael Flatley and his likes have their share in promoting the Celtic Ireland of draíocht, ceol and damhsa (magic, music and dance) although the Troubles are also associated with the image of Ireland. So what is Ireland really like? What does it mean to be Irish? If we take the assumptions and images above to a higher level, we arrive at something that is a more scientific frame for discussion: identity. It includes much more than stereotypes describe.
The term is a controversial one in Germany with its history and it is therefore not very often discussed in public. The attempt in the last few years to discuss and find a definition of a German identity (or Leitkultur) was not successful and finally ended, stuck with a bad connotation. With Ireland having a completely different history than Germany, Irish identity seems to me much more evident and shown in Ireland and by the Irish people. After tracing out the limits and meanings of the term identity in general, this paper will deal with the components and characteristics of Irish identity and how it was constructed and developed.

§ 2 Definitions

The Term identity , especially when talking about a whole country‘s identity, is closely linked to the concept of culture. So we need to define both terms in order to find out about Ireland‘s identity (and culture).

§ 2.1 What is ′culture′?

There is no one and only definition of culture and the sociologist Raymond Williams even says that „ Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language“.¹ Nevertheless, we need to find components of culture to get parameters which help us to find components of an Irish Identity in the end. A start would be the rather simplistic definition of culture as „the way of life of a group of people“, i.e. how we live your lives². That definition includes such an immense amount of things that it cannot be used for my purpose here. The literature on the topic is also huge and I therefore exclude things such as styles of architecture, patterns of land use (which is definitely a distinctive feature compared to Germany), the values that lead to social change or what is considered as a high achievement in arts, etc... So which parts of culture are interesting for this paper?
Looking into the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, one finds a more specific definition of culture: „the ideas, beliefs, and customs that are shared and accepted by people in a society“.³ Furthermore, I would include the values of a society, formal behavioural traditions and rituals and its language.⁴ Since later on we will focus in the Irish identity, it is vital not to forget the national aspect which is amongst others a "historical territory, [...] and historical memories."⁵

§ 2.2 What is ′identity′?

What is now still left unclear is the concept of identity. Again very basically, it means to know who we are. Here, we don′t need to go into more detail about the meaning of the term itself but we need to distinguish. Namely, between Individual, social and cultural identity. Individual identity is the unique sense of oneself whereas social identity is created by a collective sense of belonging to a group and of individuals identifying with other members of the group. Cultural identity is more specific with individuals having the sense of belonging to a distinct ethnic or cultural group.⁶ Since a group cannot exist without individuals and a society always includes culture, these three definitions intertwine. Identity, especially for a whole country, is inter alia the knowledge of those things that we above have defined as culture.

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1 Kidd, Warren, Culture and identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) 9.

2 Kidd, 5.

3 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 3rd ed. (München: Langenscheidt, 1995) 330.

4 Kidd, 9.

5 Searle-White, Joshua, The Psychology of Nationalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) 52.

6 Kidd, 26.